WATER CULTURE COMPARED WITH LAND CULTURE. 233 



repletion, so that there would be abundance for netters, seiners, 

 and fishermen of all kinds, whether they fished in season or out of 

 season, early and late, and with murderous or legitimate imple- 

 ments. This is the object to be obtained, and although at first it 

 may be desirable to have protective laws till the propagating- 

 houses are established and in working, in the end they should be 

 all swept away and the people allowed to pursue, catch, and eat 

 whenever they might feel so inclined. No river on our continent 

 yields more than a million shad annually; so that with a moderate 

 effort the supply could be immensely augmented ; but the effort 

 should not be suspended until at least one hundred million young 

 fry are placed alive in every stream of considerable size at present 

 visited by these fine fish. 



The vast superiority of shad raising over salmon raising is per- 

 ceived in a moment by a comparison of the two systems. The 

 former requires merely a few hundred boxes of common wood, 

 with wire sieving over the bottom, covered with coal-tar to pro- 

 tect it from the action of the water. These boxes have pieces of 

 wood nailed on their sides to act as floats, and at such an angle 

 as to keep the bottom slightly inclined against the current, the 

 degree of inclination being regulated by experiment. The boxes 

 are -strung behind one another in long lines, their floats projecting 

 beyond the ends, and connected with ropes. The whole swings 

 with the tide if in a tide-way, or tails out under the influence of 

 the current, and needs no care except at slack-water when they 

 need jogging now and then to keep the eggs from being smothered. 

 The expense of all this is so trifling as hardly to be worth men- 

 tioning, while the product is immense. 



The spawning-grounds are always near fishing-stations, and the 

 fiyliermen can readily be induced to haul at night by a little extra 

 remuneration, as they use the fish whether stripped or not. As 

 soon as the net is hauled ashore and the fish thrown into a boat a 

 pan half full of water — for dry impregnation has not yet been tried, 

 although it will probably be universal in time — is placed near the 

 operator, to whom the fish are handed one after the other. He 

 manipulates them, throwing them aside as fast as they are stripped 

 and when they have all been used he sets the pans aside for half 

 an hour, during which time the eggs swell and become firm and 

 turgid and the water falls ten degrees in temperature. This is 

 repeated as often as the nets are hauled, and finally the pans are 

 taken to the boxes and emptied into the latter, where the eggs 



